How to annotate a textbook: the study methods system from WeSolve+

The system is small enough to actually keep.

Mark for your future self, not your present mood

The only customer of an annotation is you in three weeks, hunting for what mattered. That customer needs claims, definitions, thresholds and disagreements, not underlined atmosphere. Before marking anything, ask the marker test question: would an examiner grade a question about this line? The highlighter earns its ink only on yes, which is why good annotation looks sparse and slightly boring.

A margin code beats a rainbow

Five marks cover studying: a box for definitions, a star for exam likely claims, a question mark for confusions to resolve, an arrow for connections to earlier material, and a number for steps in a sequence. The code costs nothing to remember and makes a marked chapter scannable in seconds, where elaborate color systems collapse under the weight of their own legend by midterm week. Highlighting alone, the literature's perennial low scorer in the 2013 review, improves sharply the moment marks carry meanings.

The question mark margin is the goldmine

Marks that record confusion outvalue marks that record importance, because confusions are personal and invisible to any generator. Resolve each question mark within the week, from the reread, a classmate or office hours, and card the resolution with the original confusion on the front, dated so recurring confusions announce themselves. Your own past confusion is the best exam predictor you own, the same principle the error logs in the math route run on.

Route marked pages into practice

An annotated chapter is an index of retrieval handles, and handles want pulling: photograph the marked pages so the photo path lifts boxed definitions and starred claims into cards, and run generated question rounds on the chapter the same day. The delayed production gap, near 80 percent against about a third in Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 retrieval experiments, is the distance between a marked book and a studied one.

Library books and PDFs

Borrowed books take sticky flags with the same code; PDFs take the reader's own highlight layers, exported or screenshotted into the same pipeline. The system's whole cost is a five symbol habit and one photograph per chapter, and its product is practice aimed at what you personally found hard. As throughout this blog: the percentages belong to the named studies, and WeSolve+ supplies conversion machinery, not claims.

Digital annotation with the same code

PDF readers carry the system unchanged: the five marks become five highlight colors or comment prefixes, and exported annotations arrive pre sorted. The discipline transfers whole, and the photograph step disappears since the file is already the pipeline's format. Borrowed devices lose nothing either, because the code lives in your habits rather than in the ink.

By Mert Erarslan (Exam prep and subject routes)

Last updated: 2026-08-15 · Written with AI assistance and reviewed before publishing.